The war was over, but for weeks shots resounded from a rocky knoll above the garden that Jela Smiciklas tended in the desperate poverty of vanquished Croatia in 1945. Each day, thousands of wounded soldiers and Nazi collaborators, packed into truck beds like livestock, passed her field en route to the remote hilltop. A few minutes later the trucks rumbled back, empty but for a few bundles of clothes. Day and night the wooded hills reverberated with screams.

Two months after NATO bombs cut short Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's systematic effort to purge Kosovo of ethnic Albanians, mounting evidence suggests that some Albanians are now engaged in an "ethnic cleansing" campaign of their own--in this case, with the province's remaining Serbs as its victims.

She lives in a small wooden toolshed with her two teen-age children. She is reduced to selling cigarettes and chewing gum to soldiers who saunter by the small market and lone newsstand here. It is a fate she blames entirely on the Muslims, who she says drove her from her home in nearby Sarajevo, killed her friends and tore apart her family.

Milenko Dobrijevic stood among the defeated soldiers of the Krajina Serb army, now dejected members of a miserable mass of refugees, and vowed revenge Thursday. "My grandfather was a Chetnik," he said, referring to the Serbian royalists known for their brutality in both world wars. "He took his revenge, and I will do the same. The first Muslim or Croat I meet, even an innocent one, I will take his house." "And I," proclaimed another of the soldiers, "will kill him."

Slovenia on Friday declared its intention to secede from Yugoslavia later this month while Croatia boycotted critical negotiations aimed at saving the federation, portending an ominous turn in relations among ethnic groups already poised for civil war. All six Yugoslav republic presidents were to have met in Belgrade in an eleventh-hour attempt to avert a violent breakup of the federation.

The leaders of Yugoslavia's two major republics, Communist-ruled Serbia and pro-secession Croatia, met in an effort to defuse ethnic and political tensions that threaten the Balkan federation with civil war. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman met at an undisclosed location near the border between the two republics, the national news agency Tanjug said. They agreed to seek a solution to the crisis within two months.

A teen-ager was wounded as hundreds of ethnic Croatians demanding a homeland demonstrated outside the Yugoslav Consulate in Sydney, Australia. The 13-year-old victim, hit in the neck and throat, was listed in satisfactory condition. It is unclear whether the shots came from inside or outside the consulate. The incident occurred as 1,500 protesters demanding a Croatian homeland in Yugoslavia marked National Day, the anniversary of the Communist government in Belgrade.

Croatia will rise up in arms to defend its sovereignty if federal authorities order the army to quell ethnic unrest in the newly democratic republic, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman vowed Thursday. Hours later, according to wire service reports, the Croatian government announced that the republic was mobilizing its militia reserves. But it called it a "routine check" of the reserve units.

Police briefly clashed with about 10,000 people and used truncheons to control a crowd Friday in ethnically tense Kosovo province, Yugoslav media said. The incident occurred when thousands of people gathered outside the Hall of Culture in Kosovo Polje. There, Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian Communist Party chief, was listening to complaints about alleged harassment of minorities by the Albanian majority in Kosovo, Yugoslav Television reported.

Police in armored vehicles used tear gas and clubs to disperse 1,000 stone-throwing ethnic Albanians in Yugoslavia's Kosovo province. The protesters were objecting to the trial of Azem Vlasi, former chairman of the Communist Party of Kosovo. He and 14 others are charged with organizing illegal protests against Serbians in the province.

She lives in a small wooden toolshed with her two teen-age children. She is reduced to selling cigarettes and chewing gum to soldiers who saunter by the small market and lone newsstand here. It is a fate she blames entirely on the Muslims, who she says drove her from her home in nearby Sarajevo, killed her friends and tore apart her family.

In this Croatian nationalist stronghold marooned between craggy ridges of the Dinaric Mountains, young men strut in the high-collared black uniforms of World War II-era fascists. Police patrolling the grenade-pocked streets sport buttons bearing the likeness of Ante Pavelic, the native son and Nazi quisling who directed the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Serbs half a century ago. "Long Live the NDH!"

May 5, 1991 | MICHAEL MONTGOMERY and CAROL J. WILLIAMS, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Federal army troops stepped up patrols in eastern Croatia on Saturday after another person was killed in ethnic violence between Serbs and Croats, raising the three-day death toll to 17. A large column of tanks and armored vehicles was reported moving toward the town of Vukovar late Saturday after Belgrade television reported that a Serbian man was shot dead by Croatian police at a barricade in the nearby village of Sotin.

The leaders of Yugoslavia's two major republics, Communist-ruled Serbia and pro-secession Croatia, met in an effort to defuse ethnic and political tensions that threaten the Balkan federation with civil war. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman met at an undisclosed location near the border between the two republics, the national news agency Tanjug said. They agreed to seek a solution to the crisis within two months.

Slovenia on Friday declared its intention to secede from Yugoslavia later this month while Croatia boycotted critical negotiations aimed at saving the federation, portending an ominous turn in relations among ethnic groups already poised for civil war. All six Yugoslav republic presidents were to have met in Belgrade in an eleventh-hour attempt to avert a violent breakup of the federation.

The war was over, but for weeks shots resounded from a rocky knoll above the garden that Jela Smiciklas tended in the desperate poverty of vanquished Croatia in 1945. Each day, thousands of wounded soldiers and Nazi collaborators, packed into truck beds like livestock, passed her field en route to the remote hilltop. A few minutes later the trucks rumbled back, empty but for a few bundles of clothes. Day and night the wooded hills reverberated with screams.

In this Croatian nationalist stronghold marooned between craggy ridges of the Dinaric Mountains, young men strut in the high-collared black uniforms of World War II-era fascists. Police patrolling the grenade-pocked streets sport buttons bearing the likeness of Ante Pavelic, the native son and Nazi quisling who directed the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Serbs half a century ago. "Long Live the NDH!"

May 5, 1991 | MICHAEL MONTGOMERY and CAROL J. WILLIAMS, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Federal army troops stepped up patrols in eastern Croatia on Saturday after another person was killed in ethnic violence between Serbs and Croats, raising the three-day death toll to 17. A large column of tanks and armored vehicles was reported moving toward the town of Vukovar late Saturday after Belgrade television reported that a Serbian man was shot dead by Croatian police at a barricade in the nearby village of Sotin.

Croatia will rise up in arms to defend its sovereignty if federal authorities order the army to quell ethnic unrest in the newly democratic republic, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman vowed Thursday. Hours later, according to wire service reports, the Croatian government announced that the republic was mobilizing its militia reserves. But it called it a "routine check" of the reserve units.

Police in armored vehicles used tear gas and clubs to disperse 1,000 stone-throwing ethnic Albanians in Yugoslavia's Kosovo province. The protesters were objecting to the trial of Azem Vlasi, former chairman of the Communist Party of Kosovo. He and 14 others are charged with organizing illegal protests against Serbians in the province.